Is happiness a state of mind or a physical state? Many people argue that happiness is both a mental and physical state. However, being happy is merely a mental state. Happiness is being happy daily. If you are unhappy with your current situation and thoughts but still want to be happy, you must work on yourself mentally first. Then you can work on changing your circumstances physically.
You can begin to be happy by committing to the following steps for one week. Think of it as a week-long experiment. It’s okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them and move forward from them. This journey to happiness includes everything from eating healthy foods to meditating and using positive psychology. When you follow these steps for a full week, you will find more reasons to be happy.
One: Positive Psychology – The first step in being happy is adopting a positive mindset. This means that you embrace all of the qualities of being happy. Baumeister discusses the importance of happiness as being related to relationships. He says that happiness is related to meaning and the meaning of relationships is being attached to something you can control. In other words, the more control you have over something the happier you will be.
Two: Attitude – The second step to being happy is to change your attitude about negativity and negative thoughts. Baumeister says that negativity eats away at your potential for happiness. You must learn to detach yourself from negative thoughts and focus instead on positive thoughts and actions. Remember, positive thinking doesn’t mean writing positive affirmations and don’t confuse having positive emotions with being happy. Also, being aware of your negative thoughts does not mean that you dismiss them out of hand. Instead, acknowledge them and think about them later.
Three: Feeling Good – If your goal is to be happy then you need to experience your feelings. This is where the third step in positive psychology comes in. You need to be attuned to your feelings so that you can better understand them. By being attuned to your feelings you can better control them. When you know what is going on in your mind, you can make changes that make you feel good. This will also help you change your behaviour so that you don’t create more negative thoughts in your life and this will also help you to obtain more happiness.
Four: Use Your Strengths – The last piece of advice comes from focusing on your strengths. You cannot allow your weaknesses to stop you from pursuing happiness. Although these weaknesses are something you need to work on, you cannot ignore them. You can use your strengths to overcome these weaknesses.
Five: Gratitude – In the final step of positive psychology, you must incorporate gratitude. You must surround yourself with gratitude so that you can experience happiness. You can do this by finding things to grateful for in all aspects of your life. This includes good health, success, relationships, etc. By surrounding yourself with gratitude you will experience more gratitude.
By focusing on your gratitude you will experience more happiness. When you start to focus on gratitude, you will also experience all the good things in life, you will have more peace, you will have more energy, you will sleep better, you will eat better, you will have better relationships, etc. Research has shown that the more you focus on gratitude the more contented and happy you will be. It is as simple as that.